MHCLG has invested in a growing range of analytical, data and digital services that support different aspects of the department's work. These services have evolved over time in response to different user needs, organisational priorities and technology opportunities, resulting in a diverse landscape of platforms, products and initiatives supporting the collection, management, analysis, sharing and reuse of data.

MHCLG's analytical community comprises approximately 400 practitioners across operational research, statistics, economics and social research disciplines. These users undertake a broad range of analytical activities, including statistical production, reporting and monitoring, dashboard development, modelling, policy analysis and ad hoc analytical support.

The focus of this discovery is the analytical community and the services most frequently used to support analytical workflows. While MHCLG operates a wider ecosystem of data, digital and technology services, this research concentrated on understanding analytical work, the role that analytical services currently play within those workflows and where an emerging technology like Databricks might genuinely add value — rather than simply replace what was already there.

The European Commission Joint Research Centre was piloting a new approach to evidence transparency — making the evidence behind Commission decisions more open, structured and accessible. The challenge was as much organisational as technical: how do you align a distributed group of researchers, policy specialists and technical staff around a shared way of working?

I facilitated a series of workshops with Commission staff across the Joint Research Centre, Publications Office and multiple Directorates. The first workshop mapped evidence types and solutions using a set of structured service cards, each capturing scope, access, format and identifiers for a distinct type of evidence. Participants reviewed, annotated and connected them across a large evidence wall, building a shared picture of what existed and where the gaps were.

The second workshop focused on defining service components — the discrete things the future service would need to do. Groups worked through five themes: improving policy officers' skills, early guidance, working with contractors, citation tools and enhancing existing infrastructure. I designed the workshop structure and facilitated across all sessions, using a shared service blueprint as a live working artefact that groups annotated and extended during the day.

Visual representations were produced throughout and used as working tools. The digital evidence map captured the full landscape of evidence types, tools and their relationships at a scale no spreadsheet could hold.

The work concluded with a co-designed recommendations report, capturing key findings and a clear set of actions for the next phase of the pilot.

The London Borough of Redbridge needed to understand the lived experience of people placed in temporary accommodation — a population who rarely have a formal voice in the design of the services that shape their daily lives.

I conducted user interviews with people living across different types of temporary housing: private accommodation, hostel and supported accommodation. Each conversation was different. The consistencies, when they appeared, were telling.

In between interviews I documented the environment — the noticeboard, the key cabinet, the empty room with its wrapped mattress. The physical space communicated things that the official record of the service did not.

I ran group review sessions with the council team to work through the material together, identifying common themes until shared patterns became clear enough to act on. The output was a set of user needs grounded in what people had actually said, and a service journey map that made the gaps in the current service visible to everyone in the room.

In 2016, Government Digital Service set out to build a shared design system for the whole of UK government — a pattern library that delivery teams across every department could use to build consistent, accessible services.

I worked in two-week research sprints, continuously testing patterns with teams who were actively building services. Card sorting, tree testing and direct shadowing of delivery teams gave us evidence about what worked — and what needed rethinking.

Alongside the design system, I developed new design patterns including the task list and the check-before-you-start pattern, both published to the GDS design notes blog. I also sat on the panel for ten service assessments, reviewing teams from departments across government.

The design system passed its alpha service assessment and proceeded into private beta. It is now the GOV.UK Design System, used by thousands of teams across the public sector.

At AKQA I led a team commissioned by Barclays to review and redesign the entire end-to-end customer experience around their mortgage products — one of the most complex and consequential journeys a customer can undertake with a bank.

We began with senior stakeholder interviews to understand the business constraints and strategic priorities. Qualitative research with mortgage customers gave us a view from the other side: what people actually experienced, where trust broke down, and where the process felt opaque or unnecessarily hard.

Ideation workshops and co-creation sessions with customers let us test ideas against real expectations before they hardened into proposals. The work concluded with a series of cross-channel experience maps, prototypes, and a prioritised roadmap of improvements across the full customer journey — from first awareness through to post-completion.